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I’ve never met Marc Andreessen, although at one time in the distant past we were Twitter friends — I enjoyed the long threads he used to do, and I wrote about a few of them at Gigaom in a previous lifetime (including one about how newspapers should “burn the boats” by getting rid of their print operations). I recall thanking him a number of years ago on the anniversary of the creation of Mosaic, the first graphical web browser, something I also wrote about recently at The Torment Nexus. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately (as I’m sure many other people are) about the future of the open web — something I also wrote about in another recent Torment Nexus newsletter. So it was interesting to come across an interview that Andreessen did with his a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz, in which he talked about his life before the web, and how he came to work at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois, which started him on the path towards eventually becoming a billionaire venture capitalist.

I’m aware that being a billionaire — especially a tech billionaire — is somewhat problematic in this day and age, for a variety of reasons, and I know that some people think Marc is an bad person for other reasons. I don’t really have much to say about any of that, except to say that I don’t think being wealthy is inherently bad (although many wealthy people seem determined to prove me wrong), and I have no idea whether he is using his money for good or evil, or some combination of the two. All I know is that his invention of a graphical web browser (and subsequent iterations of it, like Netscape) changed my life, as it changed millions or possibly billions of other people’s lives around the world. So it was interesting to me to hear about how it came about, and along the way it reinforced one of my mottos, which is a variation on “better to be lucky than smart.” My version is: “it’s better to have good timing than be smart, but if possible, do both.”

Andreessen was clearly a good programmer, but he also happened to be in exactly the right place at the right time, and he hitched his wagon to an unassuming rock that would become a hurtling meteor, namely the internet and Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of hyperlinking and the web. This is reinforced throughout his discussion with Ben. As both note, he was a farm kid from the boonies in Wisconsin, more familiar with tractors than programming. But he was interested in computers and wound up at the University of Champaign-Urbana in Illinois and got a job at the NCSA, where they had some of the best computers — and the best internet connectivity — in the world. So there’s young Marc, using a Unix workstation that cost $50,000 in 1992 dollars (equivalent to about $115,000 now), with a fat internet connection from the NSFnet, which he gives credit to former vice-president Al Gore for helping to create.

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Continue reading “How Marc Andreessen and I (and you) created the web”

From the New York Times: “Interpol had been looking for a disgraced finance executive for weeks when Christo Grozev, an investigative journalist, found him, hiding in Belarus. He identified the secret police agents behind one of the most high-profile assassination plots of all: the 2020 poisoning of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny. That revelation put Grozev in President Vladimir Putin’s cross hairs. He wanted Grozev killed, and to make it happen the Kremlin turned to none other than the fugitive financier, who had been recruited by Russian intelligence. The fugitive enlisted a team to begin the surveillance. The members of that team are behind bars now. The financier lives in Moscow, where several times a week he makes visits to the headquarters of the Russian secret police. Grozev — still very much alive — imagines the man trying to explain to his supervisors why he failed in his mission.”

He won the Nobel Prize for physics and then he changed his mind

From The Atlantic: “Adam Riess was 27 years old when he began the work that earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics, and just 41 when he received it. Earlier this year, Riess, who is now 55, pulled a graph-paper notebook off a bookshelf in his office at Johns Hopkins University so that I could see the yellowing page on which he’d made his famous calculations. He told me how these pen scratches led to a new theory of the universe. And then he told me why he now thinks that theory might be wrong. For nearly a century, astronomers have known that the universe is expanding, because the galaxies that we can see around us through telescopes are all rushing away. Riess studied how they moved. He very carefully measured the distance of each one from Earth, and when all the data came together, in 1998, the results surprised him. The galaxies were receding more quickly than expected. This “immediately suggested a profound conclusion,” he said.

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Continue reading “The man that Vladimir Putin couldn’t kill”

From MIT: “Arnhildur Pálmadóttir was around three years old when she saw a red sky from her living room window. A volcano was erupting about 25 miles away from where she lived on the northeastern coast of Iceland. Though it posed no immediate threat, its ominous presence seeped into her subconscious, populating her dreams with streaks of light in the night sky. Fifty years later, these “gloomy, strange dreams,” as Pálmadóttir now describes them, have led to a career as an architect with an extraordinary mission: to harness molten lava and build cities out of it. Pálmadóttir today lives in Reykjavik, where she runs her own architecture studio and the Icelandic branch of the Danish architecture company Lendager, which specializes in reusing building materials. The architect believes the lava that flows from a single eruption could yield enough building material to lay the foundations of an entire city. She has been researching this possibility for more than five years as part of a project she calls Lavaforming.”

Amelia Earhart was pushed to make riskier flights by her publicity-hungry husband

From The New Yorker: “Rather then spending time practicing in the powerful Electra, Earhart had been crisscrossing the country, giving lectures, making sponsorship appearances, and attending promotional events. For a while, she had a gig as the aviation editor at Cosmopolitan, in which she published a column about flying; she also launched a line of pilot-inspired women’s clothing. Seen from today’s perspective, Earhart was at once a pioneering aviator and a proto-influencer. Her husband of half a dozen years, George Palmer Putnam publicly blamed a blown tire, skirting any mention of pilot error. An heir to the Putnam publishing empire, he was more than Earhart’s husband; he was her manager, dealmaker, and publicist. Some found him dashing, but others thought of him as a hustler. He’d launched Earhart into fame with that Atlantic crossing in 1928 with the intention of publishing a quickie memoir.”

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Continue reading “This Icelandic architect wants to build cities out of lava”

From Damn Interesting: “Paris, 29 May 1832. All through the night, a young Frenchman named Évariste Galois stayed awake, quill in hand, frantically scrawling notes and equations across dozens of sheets of paper. He had only been studying mathematics seriously for a few years, but he had proven to be a veritable prodigy. After quickly exhausting the knowledge of his teachers, he’d branched out into his own research, extraordinarily prescient. By all rights, Galois ought to have been lauded and laurelled by the scientific community for his work. Above all, he should have been recognised and rewarded by France’s prestigious Academy of Sciences. But Galois⁠—at least, by his own reckoning⁠—had received little but dismissal from the mathematics community. Now he sat feverishly scribbling, trying to commit as many of his ideas to paper as possible.”

Williams Syndrome is like reverse autism: people who have it are almost too friendly

From the BBC: “Imagine walking down the street and feeling an overwhelming love and warmth for every single person that you met. That is a familiar experience for people with Williams Syndrome, a rare genetic condition that affects approximately 1 in 7,500 individuals. People with WS, often dubbed the ‘opposite of autism’, have an innate desire to hug and befriend total strangers. They are extremely affectionate, empathetic, talkative and gregarious. But there is a downside to being so friendly. Individuals often struggle to retain close friendships and are prone to isolation and loneliness. People with WS are also sometimes too open and trusting towards strangers, not realising when they are in danger, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and bullying. “It’s very easy for someone to fool a person with Williams Syndrome and take advantage of them, because they are so trusting,” says Alysson Muotri, a professor of paediatrics and cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California.”

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Continue reading “While plotting a revolution he also reinvented algebra”

From The Guardian: “A Chinese paraglider who was accidentally propelled more than 8,000 metres high by an updraft has been banned from the activity for six months after a video of his ordeal went viral. Peng Yujiang began from an elevation of about 3,000m in the Qilian mountain range in northern China, where he intended to test a new second-hand equipment purchase without making a proper flight, according to an investigative report by the Gansu Provincial Aviation Sports Association. However about 20 minutes into his practice he was caught in a strong updraft, which sent him soaring more than 5,000m higher, in line with flight paths and nearly the height of Mount Everest. Video from Peng’s mounted camera showed him above the clouds and covered in icicles as the temperature dropped to a reported -35C, as he tried to control his equipment.”

The hats that Smurfs wear are connected to freed slaves and ancient Rome

From Pipeline Comics: “The hat that Smurfs wear, with a peak that is slumped over, isI called a Phrygian cap, and this style of headgear is over 2000 years old. Phrygis, in case your curious, is the name of an ancient group of people who lived in the Balkans region of eastern Europe — Greece, Turkey, Romania, etc.  Their language and culture went extinct by the 5th century AD. Near the end, the Romans thought of them as being lazy and dull. The hat was adopted during the French Revolution as “the red cap of liberty” by the revolutionaries. And while the artist Peyo — creator of the Smurfs — was Belgian, he was working with French publishers, so drawing inspiration from a French symbol isn’t too crazy. The thing that Peyo maybe didn’t realize and the French revolutionaries definitely didn’t realize, though, is that it’s the wrong hat.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Chinese paraglider survives accidental flight to 28,000 feet”

From the New York Times: “Kelly Wakefield, a professional gardener, was doing her spring cleanup of a public park in St. Albans, Vt., when she stumbled upon a mysterious metal box under a pile of leaves. She shook the box and heard the telltale jangle of coins. She opened the metal box and was floored by the bounty inside. She ran to her truck and drove straight to her mother’s house. What exactly had she found? Was any of it real? Did she need a lawyer? Wakefield, 46, soon learned that she had stumbled upon a treasure chest intentionally hidden by Michael Cloherty O’Connell, the author of two history books that led readers on scavenger hunts around the Northeast. The box contained coins, antiques, a Civil War-era bullet, a map and a note from the author himself. It is now in a safe deposit box, Wakefield said, and has yet to be appraised.”

Why we call dogs that are trained to help the blind “seeing eye” dogs

From Neatorama: “Have you ever wondered why a blind person’s guide dog is called a seeing eye dog instead of just a guide dog? That’s because they came came from the organization The Seeing Eye, founded in 1929 by Morris Frank. Frank lost his sight in one eye at age six, and the other at 16. He heard about an innovative program in Germany that trained dogs to guide blind people. Frank ended up going to Switzerland to work with dog trainer Dorothy Harrison Eustis and came back with a female German shepherd he named Buddy. The real innovation in training Buddy and other guide dogs was “intelligent disobedience.” Buddy was trained to disregard her owner’s commands when the situation called for it, such as in dangerous traffic. In 1928 Frank gave a demonstration in New York City to show reporters how Buddy could guide him safely in walking through Manhattan. The next year, Frank and Eustis opened the dog training program that’s still in operation today.”

Archeologists studied a Da Vinci sketch and found secret tunnels underneath a castle

From Popular Mechanics: “The artworks of Leonardo da Vinci are vast and storied. But even amongst such a well-studied body of work, there can still be a few surprises left to discover. And recently, a team of researchers discovered one of those surprises — one drawing of a castle tunnel from a 1400s-era castle. The drawing was of Sforza Castle, and it included depictions of numerous underground tunnels — tunnels that had never been found. The team — which included experts from Polytechnic University of Milan, Codevintec, and Sforza Castel—teamed up to employ ground-penetrating radar and laser scanning that mapped multiple feet under the castle. In doing so, they discovered not only that the tunnels Leonardo alluded to in his drawings existed, but that they may only be a small piece of an intricate system weaving throughout the site.”

Hi everyone! Mathew Ingram here. I am able to continue writing this newsletter in part because of your financial help and support, which you can do either through my Patreon or by upgrading your subscription to a monthly contribution. I enjoy gathering all of these links and sharing them with you, but it does take time, and your support makes it possible for me to do that. I also write a weekly newsletter of technology analysis called The Torment Nexus.

This 1,200-year-old school is the oldest continuously operating university

From Wikipedia: “The University of al-Qarawiyyin is located in Fez, Morocco. It was founded as a mosque by Fatima al-Fihri in 857–859 and subsequently became one of the leading spiritual and educational centers of the Islamic Golden Age. It was incorporated into Morocco’s modern state university system in 1963 and officially renamed “University of Al Quaraouiyine” two years later. The mosque building itself is also a significant complex of historical Moroccan and Islamic architecture that features elements from many different periods of Moroccan history. Scholars consider al-Qarawiyyin to have been effectively run as a madrasa until after World War II. UNESCO and the Guinness World Records, have cited al-Qarawiyyin as the oldest university or oldest continually operating higher learning institution in the world.”

There are dozens of Christian saints who would be considered transgender today

From The Conversation: “There are at least 34 documented stories of transgender saints’ lives from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally appearing in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints made their way into vernacular languages. Of the 34 original saints, at least three gained widespread popularity in medieval Europe: St. Eugenia, St. Euphrosyne and St. Marinos. All three were born as women but cut their hair and put on men’s clothes to live as men and join monasteries. Eugenia, raised pagan, joined a monastery to learn more about Christianity and later became abbot. Euphrosyne joined a monastery to escape an unwanted suitor and spent the rest of his life there. Marinos, born Marina, decided to renounce womanhood and live with his father at the monastery as a man. Eugenia’s story appeared in two of the most popular manuscripts of their day – Ælfric’s “Lives of Saints” and “The Golden Legend.”

He had less than 30 seconds to sink a basketball from four different spots for $10,000

Acknowledgements: I find a lot of these links myself, but I also get some from other newsletters that I rely on as “serendipity engines,” such as The Morning News from Rosecrans Baldwin and Andrew Womack, Jodi Ettenberg’s Curious About Everything, Dan Lewis’s Now I Know, Robert Cottrell and Caroline Crampton’s The Browser, Clive Thompson’s Linkfest, Noah Brier and Colin Nagy’s Why Is This Interesting, Maria Popova’s The Marginalian, Sheehan Quirke AKA The Cultural Tutor, the Smithsonian magazine, and JSTOR Daily. If you come across something interesting that you think should be included here, please feel free to email me at mathew @ mathewingram dot com

Let’s get this out of the way right up front: I don’t have an iPhone, I have a Pixel. And I run Windows and Linux on my desktops, not MacOS. That said, I am a longtime Macbook Air fan, having had more than half a dozen (including the one I am typing this on), and a longtime iPad owner. To me, the Macbook Air is an amazing device — there are some that can duplicate the specs, but the build quality is unparalleled. Same with the iPad: I have tried multiple Android tablets and none were as good. And when I first got an iPhone way back when (I had a BlackBerry before that, as any good Canadian would), I was blown away by how revolutionary it seemed. Inventing that device was the modern equivalent of inventing the wheel or the internal combustion engine — a spectacular stroke of genius that changed the world forever (for better or worse, depending on your perspective on smartphones). Steve Jobs was definitely a genius on multiple levels, although he could be somewhat problematic as a person.

In any case, none of that means I won’t criticize Apple when it deserves to be criticized, and there are plenty of times when that is true — for example, when the company brags about its commitment to privacy, but still hands over control of user data in China to the government, including access to the encryption keys. Or gives the National Security Agency in the US access to servers so the agency can mine that data in search of who knows what. Or is accused of benefitting from cheap supply chains where suppliers like Foxconn run what have been called “labour camps,” and other companies use children as young as seven years old to dig up the precious minerals involved.

The most recent glaring flaw in what is otherwise a great company was highlighted with a court decision earlier this month, but in reality it has been obvious (to me, at least, and I’m sure to many others) for quite some time. The court ruling was just the most recent event in a lawsuit that has been in progress now for almost five years. The decision came from Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, a district court judge in California who has been hearing the case since 2021. Without going back through the weeds on every aspect of this case, it was launched by Epic Games in 2020, and its target was the heart of the iPhone money machine: namely, the 30-percent fee Apple takes whenever a user buys anything through an app. Handling transactions outside of the app store in order to avoid this 30-percent fee can get an app maker suspended or banned.

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Continue reading “Apple is a great company, except for when it isn’t”

From National Library of Medicine: “The structure of modern residency programs in North America originated at Johns Hopkins Hospital during the last decade of the 19th century, under the aegis and influence of William Stewart Halsted. Halsted was a surgical innovator who greatly shaped surgical practice in the 20th century. As a young surgeon in New York, Halsted was a highly skilled, bold, fast and daring surgeon who was charismatic and sociable and excelled at teaching medical students. In Baltimore, he was a slow and meticulous surgeon who was a recluse and who avoided teaching medical students when possible. Between these 2 periods, Halsted and some colleagues accidentally became addicted to cocaine, when in late 1884 they, being aware of a new report that cocaine could be used as local anesthesia, experimented upon themselves.”

A group of chimpanzees have learned how to communicate over long distances

From La Brujula Verde: “A team of researchers documented a previously unseen behavior in a group of wild chimpanzees in the forests of Guinea-Bissau, Africa: the deliberate use of stones to produce sounds, which they interpret as a sophisticated form of long-distance communication. The team, led by biologist Sem van Loon, discovered that adult male chimpanzees repeatedly struck stones against tree trunks, leaving behind piles of these rocks at the base. Van Loon explains that this behavior, which she calls “stone-assisted drumming,” is a variant of a previously known practice in these primates. But there are differences, because while traditional drumming is usually preceded by silence and then bursts into loud sounds, in this new pattern the chimpanzees first emit loud vocalizations before striking the stones against the trees again.”

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Continue reading “Residency training was created by a doctor addicted to cocaine”

From The Wrap: “A remote indigenous tribe Amazon tribe in Brazil has sued The New York Times, claiming a story about its first exposure to the internet has led to widespread reports that its members have become addicted to pornography. Filed last week in Los Angeles, the Marubo Tribe of the Javari Valley’s lawsuit also names TMZ and Yahoo as defendants and seeks at least $180 million from each. The sovereign community alleges the story, about the arrival of Starlink in 2024, falsely portrays its 2,000 people as unable to handle basic exposure to the internet, highlighting allegations that their youth had become consumed by pornography. “These statements were not only inflammatory but conveyed to the average reader that the Marubo people had descended into moral and social decline as a direct result of internet access,” the lawsuit says.

Japanese wrestler became a member of parliament and a hostage negotiator

From Grantland: “One of the best ways to appreciate the full glory of Antonio Inoki, the legendary Japanese professional wrestler, WWE Hall of Famer, and three-term member of his country’s parliament, is to Google image-search the phrase “Antonio Inoki bitch-slap.” You will see Inoki bitch-slapping the Japanese ambassador to Pakistan, a Cuban Olympian, a Japanese pop idol and member of the girl group SKE48, a man standing shirtless and in shorts in the snow, a 55-year-old female Japanese politician, the nationalistic former governor of Tokyo, a young Pakistani child, a man cradling an infant, a comedian, and scores of others. Fans, politicians, pop stars, and children from all over the world line up to receive his famed bitch-slap in the belief that it will invigorate them and transfer some of Inoki’s “burning fighting spirit.”

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Continue reading “Rainforest tribe sues the NYT over porn addiction report”

From Public Seminar: “Electronic monitoring came into the criminal justice system not as a result of extensive research, but in part because a district judge in Albuquerque avidly pursued the idea in the 1970s. Judge Jack Love had read about the use of location tracking for livestock, and was further inspired by a Spiderman comic strip in which Kingpin forcibly slaps an “electronic radar device” onto Spiderman’s wrist so he can keep an eye on him. Motivated by a desire to keep people out of the brutal New Mexico prisons, Love convinced a computer salesman to design a similar device, and in 1983, a probation violator was the first to be fitted with one. States like California, for example, have done this to address prison overcrowding. Today, the number of people under electronic monitoring is actually quite small (about 200,000 at any given time) compared to the overall population under the umbrella of non-custodial corrections like parole.”

The Australian outback is being overrun by hundreds of thousands of feral camels

From National Geographic: “Jack Carmody has built a sizable YouTube following by showing his viewers what it takes to run a cattle station in the Australian outback—the rugged work of mending troughs, reinforcing fences, and shooting trespassers. Feral horses and donkeys, that is, and one particularly destructive invasive species: camels. Introduced in the 19th century to help colonists survey the country’s vast interior, the creatures are now wreaking havoc across the outback. Australia is now home to the world’s largest feral camel population, with estimates from several hundred thousand to as many as a million. Females can give birth every two years and live up to 40 years in the wild, meaning the number of camels can double every nine years. Weighing an average of 1,000 pounds, they roam in herds from fewer than 10 to several hundred, trampling ecosystems and destroying infrastructure. The creatures are voracious consumers of plants, competing with other wildlife and livestock.”

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Continue reading “The ankle monitor was inspired by a Spiderman comic strip”

If you’ve been following the news about Google’s I/O conference at all, you probably know that it was all about artificial intelligence — and that isn’t an exaggeration. Literally every announcement, every feature, and every app demonstration involved AI in some form or another. An autonomous AI agent called Project Astra; an AI-powered agent for writing computer code known as Jules; AI-authored “smart replies” in Gmail; an AI-powered web browsing service called Project Mariner; an AI shopping service that lets you try on clothes virtually; real-time AI-powered translation in Google Meet; an AI-powered image generator called Imagen; an AI-driven video generator called Veo; a service that blends all of these to make movies, called Flow; and of course AI in search, whether through the AI Overview at the top of a regular search, through a separate “AI Mode” search tab, or through the standalone Gemini AI app.

As Casey Newton wrote in his Platformer newsletter, Google didn’t explicitly talk about the implications of all of this AI machinery, either for its business model or for the future of the open web, but the conclusions are fairly obvious:

Snap out of this fever dream long enough and you can spot hints of the world that is coming into existence. Gmail is learning how to write in your voice, and will begin to do so later this year. The camera screen will chat with you while you are fixing your bike, telling you what to do every step of the way. NotebookLM will start generating TED talk-like videos of your PDFs for you to watch. An executive on stage says that before too long you will be able to generate a how-to video for almost any subject you like. And while the company continues to protest, it seems obvious that this new world will give you many fewer reasons to visit the open web. Google will generate the things you once searched for, and all the businesses that once relied on those searches will need a Plan B.

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Continue reading “If AI helps to kill the open web what will replace it?”

From the BBC: “A manuscript once considered an unofficial copy of Magna Carta is now believed to be a genuine version and one of the world’s most valuable documents, according to UK academics. Harvard Law School paid $27.50 for it in 1946 and for years it has remained tucked away in its library, its true identity unknown. But two medieval history professors have concluded it is an extraordinarily rare and lost original Magna Carta from 1300, in the reign of King Edward I, that could be worth millions. According to Harvard’s library accession register, the document was acquired in 1946 and was described in an auction catalogue as a “copy made in 1327… somewhat rubbed and damp-stained”. Magna Carta is a charter first issued by King John in 1215 that guaranteed the liberties and rights of his subjects and also placed the Crown under the authority of the law. Considered a key step in the evolution of human rights against oppressive rulers, it has influenced constitutions around the world.”

One of the greatest competitors in sports just retired but you’ve probably never heard of him

From the Washington Post: “Recently the news came that the sumo wrestler known as Hakuho had officially retired, after 17 years in the sport’s top division. You probably haven’t heard of this 6-foot-4-inch, 350-pound Mongolian. But you should have, because few human beings have so thoroughly mastered their craft the way Hakuho did.It is hard to overstate what he accomplished. Hakuho was the Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic of sumo, all in one man. He was a Yokozuna — the sport’s top rank — for 14 years; there have been only 73 ever. After winning his first tournament in 2006, he claimed the Emperor’s Cup in 45 of the 80 tournaments in which he competed. He was the runner-up in 18 more. For comparison, Kakuryu Rikisaburo, the other Yokozuna in the ring toward the end of Hakuho’s career, won a mere six tournaments — in part because he had the misfortune of overlapping with Hakuho. Hakuho won 13 more tournaments than the second-winningest wrestler ever, Taiho Koki.”

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Continue reading “Harvard’s copy of the Magna Carta is actually the real thing”

From Toronto Life: “Elaine Hoffman, a 71-year-old grandmother, sat in her suburban Indiana home and turned on her computer. A banner ad caught her attention: its claim seemed unbelievable — that she could make money with the click of a mouse. Hoffman knew her way around investments. She had a math degree and had worked as a financial planner before a liver transplant forced her to retire early. By keeping abreast of the markets and investing in stocks and bonds, she’d built enough of a nest egg to ensure that she and her husband would be comfortable for the rest of their lives. Still, she was curious about the ad. When the video ended, a phone number appeared on her screen. Hoffman dialled it and was soon speaking to a man who worked for an operation called Glenridge Capital. He explained tha Glenridge was an investment service that offered clients a way into the lucrative world of binary options trading.”

Mark Twain’s books may have been comedies but his life was a tragedy

From The Atlantic: “Ron Chernow’s new book Mark Twain forces us to a conclusion about its subject: he was clearly an idiot, and a born sucker. This conclusion will shock anyone who knows Twain only through his writing, in which the author is wise and witty and, above all, devastating in his portrayal of frauds, cretins, and sententious bores. In life, Twain was quite different. He was gullible, emotionally immature, and prone to shoveling money into obvious scams. He was also struck by a series of family tragedies that would have been unbearable even for a much less self-destructive man. The Twain of the printed page is irreverent and quotable, but the private Twain is petulant, self-pitying, narcissistic, and afflicted with tragedy and misery of his own making and of God’s. Mark Twain is funny. Mark Twain is funny the way the Book of Job is funny.”

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Continue reading “Behind the fancy cars and private jets was a huge fraud”

From Toronto Life: “To fellow tourists he met around the world, Jeffery Shuman was a semi-retired developer with a bright smile, an even tan and a fat wallet. In truth, he was a legendary bank robber on the run from the Toronto police and the US Marshals. He had robbed 20 banks over a five-year stretch in and around Toronto, Ottawa and Calgary, starting in 2010. He was an equal-opportunity criminal, cycling strategically through major institutions including Toronto-Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, HSBC and Scotiabank. For a while, police thought he might be a long-haul truck driver. He appeared to strike at random, robbing a few banks and then stopping for months, sometimes a year, before starting up again. He was patient and methodical. He also moved with the discipline and efficiency of someone who knew his way around a weapon. One theory was that he had high-level military or police training, which was a chilling thought to detectives. Was he one of them?”

This impossible new color is so rare that only five people have seen it

From Scientific American: “There are only so many colors that the typical human eye can see; estimates put the number just below 10 million. But now, for the first time, scientists say they’ve broken out of that familiar spectrum and into a new world of color. In a paper published on Friday in Science Advances, researchers detail how they used a precise laser setup to stimulate the retinas of five participants, making them the first humans to see a color beyond our visual range: an impossibly saturated bluish green. The researchers used lasers to precisely deliver tiny doses of light to select cone cells in the human eye. First, they mapped a portion of the retina to identify each cone cell as either an S, M or L cone. Then, using the laser, they delivered light only to M cone cells. As the laser shone into his retina, he perceived a tiny square of light, roughly the size of a thumbnail viewed at arm’s distance. In that square, he glimpsed the Emerald City: a color the researchers have named “olo.”

Note: This is a version of my When The Going Gets Weird newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Inside the rise and fall of a notorious bank robber”

As many of you may have noticed, some of these Torment Nexus newsletters involve the presentation of a bunch of evidence in the form of links, followed by a well-thought-out conclusion (some may be more well-thought than others, but I let’s not quibble). I want to say up front that this is not one of those newsletters! It’s more of a thinking-out-loud type of thing, and I hope you will come with me on this journey to an unknown and perhaps unsatisfying conclusion 🙂 As some of you know, I am interested in the evolution and social repercussions of what we refer to as AI — which in many cases may just be a form of auto-complete with a large database, or various kinds of machine learning, etc. etc. And I know that many people (perhaps even some of you) see this whole field as anathema, whether because it is controlled by oligarchs, or because it uses too many resources for too little result, or because it is the beginning of a trend that will end with the enslavement of humanity — or possibly all of the above!

I will freely acknowledge all of those existing or potential problems (except perhaps the enslavement thing — that seems unlikely at best). But as a freelance nerd with a lot of time on my hands, I think some interesting questions that emerge from all of this. I’ve written about some of them already, including how AI forces us to think about the nature of consciousness — which isn’t anywhere close to being settled, not by a long shot — and how we might act if we come to the conclusion that an AI is sentient in some sense of that term (and how we might know whether it is or not). But apart from these, there are some interesting real-world questions that come up as well, including: How are people actually using AI? And are those uses ultimately beneficial in a broader sense, or are they going to lead to some kind of universal dumbing-down of Western society? Not to jump to the end too quickly, but I don’t think there’s an overall answer to these questions — in other words, the devil (or angel) is in the details.

I’ve already written about one real-world use case, which is the AI therapy market, in which people who are suffering mental or emotional challenges use chatbots of various kinds as therapists — either because they can’t get a human therapist (even critics of this trend will admit that there is a shortage of trained therapists), because human therapists are too expensive, or because they feel more comfortable talking to a chatbot about whatever they are struggling with, or all of the above. You can read the whole thing if you like, but the conclusion I arrived at was that — for me, at least — the potential for people to actually be helped by this process outweighs any potential negative outcomes. Here’s how I put it:

Note: This is a version of my Torment Nexus newsletter, which I send out via Ghost, the open-source publishing platform. You can see other issues and sign up here.

Continue reading “Some thoughts on how people (including me) are using AI”